Thursday, 18 December 2008

So NationStates2 has finally entered public beta, and I've finally been able to create and log in to my reserved nation (but only after a bit of hassle with the game crashing repeatedly under the setup procedure) and have been actively playing for a couple of weeks now.

v2 just does not seem to be a natural progression from the original. It's almost as if someone had seen the original game and decided to do a slightly different version of it. Given that it is done by a different set of developers this is probably the case.

Its now more of a Sim than a political parody, with resources and trade between Nations, and the rankings lists, one of my favourite parts of the original, seems to of been downgraded and also has become more serious, with things such as GDP and Birth rates being ranked rather than the old 'Furniture Restoration' style rankings that exists in v1. Also to get full features requires 'donations' to purchase 'Jennifers' that you use to enable features. Obviously the onscreen Google ads (that advertise rival games!) does not earn the company enough; whereas the original can cope with a few banner ads.

NationStates2 has lost the fun factor that NationStates had. If they had expanded on that rather than add the Sim elements then it would be a better game. My last hope for it is that the Nations from the original alliance on v1 can get organised enough to reconstitute it on one of the worlds of v2. Unlike v1 the nations are split over different worlds and, apart from a one off transfer, the only way to travel between them is to burn some money!

Unfortunately NS2 is hitting the numbers on v1 as members of the alliance has nearly halved in the last few months. So someone out there must like v2. I just hope they don't pull the plug on v1 too soon.¶